Bizarro Bard Goes Memo Mad At Chelsea Hotel
Glennon Travis, 26, manages the Chelsea with an officious air. And he’s got a MySpace page! Stanley Bard he’s not
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After nabbing managerial control of the hallowed Chelsea Hotel this past summer, luxury lodging moguls Richard Born and Ira Drukier promised a glorious rebirth of the ancient inn on West 23rd Street.
No wonder, then, that they’ve installed a baby dictator behind the front desk.
Fresh-faced Glennon Travis, 26, currently presides over day-to-day operations of the old bohemian enclave, following esteemed septuagenarian manager Stanley Bard’s highly publicized, highly controversial ouster in June.
Mr. Travis, a smartly dressed, neatly coiffed, smug sort of supervisor, who showed up to work on Monday in a navy blue suit with pointy black shoes, has tried to bring some orderly fashion to the renowned nonconformist mecca.
If the previous manager, Mr. Bard, is to be remembered for his fanatical devotion to the arts—famously housing scores of notable artists, writers and musicians over a span of nearly half a century—then perhaps Mr. Travis, the new director of operations, will be remembered for his, um, mastery of the memo:
“Please remove personal items from the hallways.”
“Please note that children are not to be left unattended in the public areas of the hotel.”
Indeed, Mr. Travis’ meticulous modus operandi stands in stark contrast to his fiercely unconventional forebear, Mr. Bard. “I don’t think Stanley ever wrote a memo in his entire life!” quipped one longtime Chelsea Hotel inhabitant.
Critics of the two dissimilar operators have even complained of distinguishable forms of favoritism. Detractors have said that Mr. Bard was often kinder toward the hotel’s heavily artsy, long-term tenants; conversely, Mr. Travis has been faulted for his apparent proclivity toward transient short-term tourists.
Described by disgruntled year-round hotel dwellers as cold, curt and quick to call the cops, Mr. Travis did little to allay his standoffish reputation when recently approached for an interview.
“I really don’t have any comment for your story,” Mr. Travis told The Observer. “But we’ve got some good stuff coming up,” he added, “so keep an eye out for that.”
As if spectators to this tumultuous lodging drama weren’t watchful enough already!
Many Chelsea Hotel tenants have been fretting about the new management’s plans for months. Ever since Mr. Bard’s summer overthrow by rival heirs to the hotel—the result of a lengthy court-ordered corporate arbitration that ultimately forced Mr. Bard and his family to relinquish managerial control, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in “excessive compensation” and legal fees—residents have been fearing a mass exodus of the creative kind, as the new regime pushes for upscale renovations and higher room rates. (Rumors are now circulating about the new rulers’ clandestine room-redecorating operation.)
So far, there have been few, if any, actual evictions since the changeover. In fact, the last official eviction proceeding, according to court records, was initiated last spring by Mr. Bard’s son, David Bard, then the hotel’s president.
But there have been defectors who, after receiving ominous rent-collection letters, opted to move out rather than lawyer up. Just last month, noted Andy Warhol and Keith Richards biographer Victor Bockris packed up his things and shipped out.
Even amid such turnover, the remaining creative types soldier on. Photographer Linda Troeller and her husband, Lothar Troeller, for instance, have started documenting the woeful exits of their kindred denizens, a slowly growing collection of snapshots tentatively titled “Last Days.” Next Page >
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Like all things that once had their day, Le Cirque, The Plaza, The Oscar Wilde Memorial Book Shop (on Christopher Street)ect...room must be made for new incarnations...
There is a fatal flaw in the theory that places like the Chelsea can be kept alive on what is now no more than borrowed time and stories of long dead residents that in thier quest to find a higher consciousness, fell victum to thier own vices instead of contributing to the well being of the Chelsea those now dead have sent the hotel down a road looking for it's own $5bag of china white.
It's your own fault Ed. It's not the fault of a management company or some manager with a pention for the memo.
Be happy you took part in a special place and time Ed, but don't stagnate, fixate or fail to move to your own incarnation, in an effort to fight for what is now and forever will be a relict, and a remnant of what was an idelic commune of free thinkers, radicals, and gonzo tennants.
I don't understand. This glenon guy told people to keep their junk inside their apartments, and asked them not to let their kids run around the lobby of a hotel. I don't understand what the news is?
So what if he's trying to clean the place up, at least he's not throwing them out on the street like the old guy.
What a rag, sounds like a pretty sweet deal, they get to live in a famous hotel, and all they have to do is put up with memos and smarmy journalists.
Sounds to me like the residents of this hotel should call themselves "Artists against Change." Are folks really interested in "preserving" a run-down, decaying hotel with structural problems that border on dangerous? Highly doubtful, it seems more likely that a bunch of "artists" are interested in "preserving" their rent-free lifestyle in Manhattan. Who wouldn't? I wish, however, folks would call it for what it is -- a bunch of cheap liberals don't want to have to live like the rest of us and cloak their stinginess in a wistful sigh for a bygone era filled with free drugs, free love and apparently, free rent. Get over it and grow up. I am surprised at the lack of depth in this article and the sole focus on Mr. Travis' age - is that really relevant? Who are the residents of the Chelsea? What are they paying in rent, if anything? Who are the folks who want to preserve this building and restore it to a place where people really want to go? What is in store for this institution? Point and counter-point make a story, not some drivel about the age of a hotel manager that seems obviously planted by disgruntled inhabitants of the hotel. What happened to the integrity of The Observer?
Ah, you just don't get it fellow commenters, or maybe you do and you're parroting the BD party line because of your own agendas. The Chelsea was neither decaying nor rent-free. This is more propaganda from the new regime who realize hat they've done and wish to pretty it up. The Chelsea Hotel was an institution like none other, one that fostered an incredible number of artists. You are likely to find more burnouts with china white with a BD hotel (of course, burnotus with lots of money are socially more acceptable to our new overlords). The takeover means the death of real bohemia in Manhattan, the loss of a magical place, the end of a miracle. And all this done to a man who had the majority ownership in the hotel and worked there. All change is not good, and it is moronic to say so. Changing a heralded and rare institution into another banal "luxury" hotel for tourists is not a good change. God Bless the Chelsea residents for being the last hold out against the creeping conformity of middle America, against the homogenization, fakery and corporatization of New York. The city has become so, well, DULL.
If the Observer article was a "plant", the same could be said for some of these comments. Nice try, Glennon. Stick to Myspace. For the uninitiated, nobodylives at the Chelsea Hotel rent-free. Very far from it. The Hotel is beyond pricey and has been for quite a while, but one would have to live here to know that. Just like anywhere else in NYC, there are exist rent stabilized apartments that are occupied by tenants who EARNED the legal right to be RS. There are, in fact, rumors that rent has been withheld in protest of Bard's displacement and Glennon Travis's clammy presence in the Hotel. But rent free? Not on your life.
Is the Observer a real newspaper?
What a stupid F$&@ing article. Very poor examples vilifying Glennon for absolutely nothing. Sounds like some ego-heavy, rich pricks playing some kind of sabotage game on a young man trying his best to do a good job and find his niche. I hate a$$holes like that...
"Get over it and grow up."
I love how anyone fighting to save their homes and communities are written off as a bunch of flakes who just can't stand "change". As if all change automatically represents progress.
No one likes having their world turned upside down and their homes threatened. Buildings all over New York are using every means necessary to dump their tenants - even those paying market rents - so rooms and apartments can be rented to tourists. Residential neighborhoods on the upper west side are suddenly full of "youth hostels" and tenants are being harassed, beaten up, and thrown out in the street.
A neighbor of mine (a 59 year old woman) was harassed constantly by new management at our building for two solid years and, because of a delay in paper work, was literally thrown out on the street in 29 degree weather ("grow up!").
Chelsea Hotel tenants also pay thousands of dollars a month to live there - it may be stabilized but it ain't cheap!!
I've no doubt tenants at Chelsea Hotel just want someone to run the place who understands and wants to maintain the unique character and history of the place, not just bulldoze it into another idiotic Marriott where tourists come and gawk at the "artsy types". In any case they don't need some snot-nose at the front desk who treats them like sh*t because they have the nerve to actually live there.
The reason we had artists and writers like Thomas Wolfe and Dylan Thomas and Larry Rivers is because THEY NEVER DID "GROW UP". When there's no place left for in the world for oddballs, freaks and other creative types to congregate (and we're running out of places fast) there will be no art, no culture, no life at all. Just one big soulless shopping mall of toothy white bread types reading NY Magazine and "The New York Observer".
Oh Joy.